I'm a self-taught trader, actively engaged in the markets since 1997. That year I went looking for company, because a lot of trading is boring, and found the trading community in the IRC chat rooms of the early internet.
I shared my ideas, my forecasts and my trades, and people started following along. That led to running one of the first real-time trading chat rooms on the internet, and then to speaking engagements and seminars around the US and Europe.
At one of those seminars, McGraw-Hill offered me my first book deal, and published Mastering Futures Trading in 2004. McGraw-Hill then offered me a second book, and published Optimize Your Trading Edge in 2007. Over the years I've written articles and given interviews for TheStreet and Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities.
After the books, I kept training traders: hundreds one-on-one and tens of thousands in groups, across cultures and in institutional settings. The lesson that stuck: the traders who did best weren't the ones who copied my style. They were the ones who found a way of trading that fit the person they actually were. That's what the Private Edge Audit is built on.
I personally lead every audit and own every finding in it. My small team and AI tools handle the scoring, data cleanup and first drafts; the judgment is mine. The Yoder Desk, the private AI trading desk each client gets, is AI: built and tested by me before your audit, then set up on your trades and checked by me during it.
My work is education about process, discipline and self-knowledge. No signals, no trade calls, and no promises about money.
I have my own trading approach, researched over many years, which I trade for myself: index futures intraday, and longer-term stock position trades. I have no reason to change it based on anyone else's, and no use for your strategy. You don't have to guard your playbook with me.
I also work with institutional teams. For many years I've worked privately with ultra-high-net-worth individuals, single-family offices and institutional teams. That work is closely held, and I have never broken that trust. It's a separate practice, with separate clients and no shared client data. You can read about it at boyoder.com.
You can also find me on X at @bo_yoder.